News and updates of what is happening in the Moorfoot Runners Club. This information is intended for club members and is complementary to the information on the club website MoorfootRunners.com

Monday, 12 August 2013

Scottish 5000m title again for Sarah

As she returns to full fitness and prepares for the World
Mountain Running Championships in Poland on 9 September, Sarah McCormack was at Scotstoun on Saturday for some relative speedwork
at the Scottish National Senior Track and Field Championships and the defence
of her 5000m title. Having been troubled by a niggling foot injury which caused
her withdrawal from the Ireland team for the European Mountain Running
Championships in early July, Sarah was hoping for a good test as a measure of
her progress but a poor field, both in quantity and quality, and a very stiff
breeze at the Glasgow track, meant a late re-assessment of her race plan which
effectively turned into a solo time trial from the gun. Sarah retained her
title comfortably in 16.14, five seconds faster than her winning time last year,
and just 25m short of lapping the silver medallist.

In the circumstances,
that was a good indicator that Sarah is back running well. We’ve been getting
some input from Chris Jones, Ireland National Endurance coach and personal coach of European cross-country champion Fionnuala Britton, which has been very
helpful and a bit different for Sarah, and he was pleased with that
performance. It was disappointing not to get a race but her winning time
and the consistency of her lap splits in the stiff breeze meant it was still a
valuable outing. But where was everyone else? There is a decent crop of female distance runners in Scotland
at the moment, with a good few contenders for the Glasgow 2014 qualifying time
for the 5000m who we’d hoped would provide a stern test for Sarah but
puzzlingly none of them had even entered. Maybe the famous McCormack kick scared them all off!!